Audio

Powerbeats3 Wireless earphones with W1 chip & 12-hour battery available to preorder

Powerbeats3 Wireless earphones, a successor to the Powerbeats2 Wireless edition, are now available to buy from Apple.com in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, China and elsewhere. The accessory is available in White, Shock Yellow, Flash Blue, Black and Siren Red.

Listings for the $199.95 Bluetooth earphones on local Apple.com websites display delivery estimates ranging from 2-3 days to 1-2 weeks.

Apple execs go on PR offensive to defend removal of “dinosaur” headphone jack from iPhone 7

Apple's marketing honcho Phil Schiller said during yesterday's iPhone 7 keynote that the company has had the courage and vision to remove the ubiquitous 3.55 mm audio headphone jack from the handset in a forward-thinking move that has allowed its engineers to cram more hardware features inside the handset than ever before.

Schiller, Greg Joswiak and hardware chief Dan Riccio took to BuzzFeed News to list some of the new iPhone 7 features made possible by the abolished jack.

iPhone 7 might ship with Lightning EarPods and 3.5mm headphone jack adapter

An image of another claimed spec sheet has surfaced on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo, indicating that the iPhone 7 could come with both a Lightning edition of Apple's wired EarPods and a Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter in the box. As a result, the iPhone 7 should provide its owners with an appropriate solution for connecting their existing wired headphones to the handset right out of the box, without requiring them to purchase a standalone adapter.

Facebook testing autoplaying videos with sound

What could be worse than those pesky autoplaying videos on Facebook? Autoplaying videos that begin playing audio automatically as you scroll past them in your News Feed, but of course! And that's precisely what Facebook is currently experimenting with, according to Mashable.

At the moment, the company is currently testing two methods of getting users to watch video with sound: one involving autoplaying videos with sound and the other with an Unmute button on the lower right corner of such videos.

This is how I know Samsung will ditch the headphone jack

Three days ago, Samsung of South Korea took the wraps off its flagship Galaxy Note 7 phablet. It's a cool, powerful smartphone that features a curved 5.7-inch AMOLED screen, Galaxy S7-like design, speedy chips, an iris scanner and an improved S Pen (which has learned a few new tricks, like translating words, and is now waterproof itself).

Believe it or not, a Samsung executive during the Note 7 unveiling mocked live, on stage, Apple's rumored decision to remove the 3.5mm audio jack from the next iPhone.

“You know what else it [Note 7] comes with? An audio jack. I’m just saying,” he quipped.

Last month, revenue from U.S. sales of wireless headphones surpassed that of wired ones

If you need the definite proof that Apple's rumored decision to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack from the next iPhone is based on some actual real-world numbers, here's one. According to the latest stats for the month of June, published Thursday by research firm NPD, revenue from sales of wireless headphones in the United States during the month of June beat that of their wired counterparts. Revenue from wireless headphones accounted for 54 percent of U.S. dollar sales and 17 percent of unit sales in the headphone category.

Genuine-looking iPhone 7 Lightning-to-3.5-mm audio adapter caught on video

As you know, the next iPhone is expected to ditch the 3.5mm analog audio jack for wireless headphones, powered by Bluetooth, and wired ones, driven by Lightning. Now, certain sources are adamant that the handset may ship with a Lightning-to-3.5-mm audio adapter in the box so that folks could continue using their existing audio accessories.

Today, we get another glimpse of the claimed adapter in a set of leaked images and an accompanying high-resolution video. This latest leak came on Thursday via Vietnamese blog Tinhte.vn, which claims to have received the adapter from a Foxconn factory.

Fully assembled Lightning-based EarPods shown on leaked images

Last month, a batch of photographs out of China claiming to depict a Lightning-based version of Apple’s standard EarPods headphones left us scratching our head due to the product's sketchy appearance. But now, French blog NowhereElse.fr points us to another set of leaked images, originally posted on the Chinese social network Weibo, that ostensibly show off a fully assembled EarPods headphones with a Lightning connector.

UPDATE: confirmed as fake.

First Lightning-to-headphone adapter surfaces, offering a sign of things to come

Apple is widely believe to remove the more than century-old 3.5mm analog audio jack from the iPhone 7 in favor of Lightning-enabled headphones and wireless Bluetooth headsets. Chinese vendor Tama Electric is advertising at Computex 2016 in Taipei the first Lightning-to-headphone that would let folks connect their existing analog headphones based on the 3.5mm audio jack to the iPhone 7.

The listing was first discovered by the oft-reliable Japanese blog Mac Otakara.

Alleged iPhone 7 part has 3.5mm headphone jack we thought would be going away

An image of a purported component for Apple's unannounced next-generation iPhone has leaked out yesterday courtesy of French blog NowhereElse.fr and—surprise, surprise—it depicts a 3.5mm headphone jack. Remember, the rumor-mill has been cognizant for months that the century-old analog audio jack will be removed from an 'iPhone 7' in favor of Lightning-powered or wireless headphones.

The image appears to show a Lightning cable assembly, supposedly for an iPhone device, and it looks a tad different compared to the same part found in the current-generation iPhone 6s.

How to convert text into a spoken iTunes track on Mac

Whenever you want to save a block of important text to your Mac, you probably copy and paste it into the Notes app or into a text editor to save it as a text document. But, did you know you could save any body of text on your Mac as a spoken iTunes track instead?

In this tutorial, you will learn how to convert any highlighted body of text into a spoken iTunes audio track.